This invention relates to a silver halide photographic material containing a dye, more particularly, to a silver halide photographic material containing hydrophilic colloidal layer tinted with a dye useful as a light-absorbent.
Incorporation of dyes in a silver halide photographic material in order to absorb specific wavelength of light for purposes of filtering, anti-halation, anti-irradiation and sensitivity adjustment is a well-known practice and in such photographic materials hydrophilic colloidal layers are tinted with the incorporated dye.
A filter layer is usually positioned either on the top or between the light-sensitive emulsion layers to ensure that the incident light reaching each emulsion layer will have a preferred spectral composition. Further, in order to improve the sharpness of the photographic image, an anti-halo layer is provided between an emulsion layer and a support or at the back of the support so as to absorb any deleterious light that is reflected at the interface between the emulsion layer and the support or from the back side of the support. Another common practice is to tint emulsion layers so that any deleterious light reflected or scattered by silver halide grains will be absorbed to prevent irradiation.
The dyes used for attaining these purposes must satisfy various requirements, among which the followings are particularly important: that they should have satisfactory absorption spectral characteristics depending on a specific object of use; that they should be completely decolored during photographic processing and should easily dissolve out of the silver halide photographic material, resulting in no color remnant or staining by the dye after photographic processing; that they should not cause fogging, desensitization or any other adverse effects on photographic emulsions; and that they should not change in color or fade with good aging stability in solution or silver halide photographic materials.
In order to discover a dye which satisfies all of these requirements, a considerable amount of studies have been made, to provide a number of dyes, among which are the oxonole dyes described in U.S. Pat. No. 3,247,127, Examined Japanese Patent Publication Nos. 22069/1964 and 10059/1980, etc. However, there could be obtained no dye which satisfies all of the aforementioned requirements and which has good characteristics enough to be used in photographic materials.
Oxonole dyes having a carbamoyl group in 3-position are described in British Patent No. 1,338,799, Unexamined Published Japanese Patent Application Nos. 77327/1976, 143342/1983, 111641/1984, 139944/1988, etc. Those dyes described in British Patent No. 1,338,799 and Unexamined Published Japanese Patent Application No. 77327/1976 have no water-soluble group in their structure, and therefore they are insoluble or only sparingly soluble in water.
However, photographic processing is usually conducted within a short period of time under low-alkaline conditions and, hence, it is difficult for these dyes to completely dissolve out of the photographic materials. In addition, dyes which have once been decolored might be recolored afterwards or, even if they are not recolored, they might cause photographically adverse effects. Therefore, if dyes are to be used in photographic materials of a multi-layered coating structure in order to achieve the above mentioned objects, it is desirable to render these dyes water-soluble by introducing water-soluble groups. Such water-soluble dyes will readily dissolve out during photographic processing and will never remain in the photographic material.
The water-soluble dyes are advantageous in that they can be incorporated into photographic materials as an aqueous solution. On the contrary, sparingly soluble dyes require the use of an organic solvent, which can be a potential cause of pollution.
Unexamined Published Japanese Patent Application Nos. 143342/1983, 111641/1984, 139944/1988 and 126646/1989 disclose oxonole dyes having a carbamoyl group in 3-position at which a water-soluble group is attached; however, their properties, especially the bleaching performance, is unsatisfactory and further improvements have been needed.
Unexamined Published Japanese Patent Application No. 93534/1990 discloses a dye having a hetero ring at the 3,3'-position of a pyrazolonering; however, the hetero rings disclosed therein are only morpholine, piperazine and piperidine, and quite different from heterocyclic rings contemplated in the present invention. Furthermore, the compounds disclosed in this reference are unsatisfactory in performance such as bleaching performance, etc.